WINTER HAVEN, Fla. – The IUP softball program dropped the opening game of the day on Sunday to Missouri-St. Louis before bouncing back for a 7-1 victory against New Haven at The Spring Games in Florida.
The split pushes IUP to 10-4 on the season.
Jess Cekada had three hits and an RBI in the opening game, while
Elizabeth Kasper moved to 3-0 on the season with a complete game effort in the circle.
Kasper posted nine strikeouts, needing just 88 pitches to cruise through seven innings of action.
Game One: Missouri-St. Louis 6, IUP 2
USML pushed across two runs in the third and fourth innings to take control early. The Tritons added two more runs in the fifth before IUP tacked on single runs in the home half of the fifth and sixth.
Cekada finished with her third multi-hit effort of the season in the setback.
Kendall Young went the distance, dropping to 4-2 on the season despite whirling five strikeouts.
A pair of run scoring doubles in the third lifted the Tritons to a 4-0 advantage.
Madison Pikula got IUP on the board with a sacrifice fly in the fifth. In the sixth, Cekada singled home
Paige Truax.
Game Two: IUP 7, New Haven 1
Kasper whirled her seventh career complete game and third of the 2024 season, leading the Hawks in the circle on Sunday. She pushes her career total to 73 strikeouts, just one shy of matching her season total from 2023.
Kasper did not allow a run until the seventh inning against the Chargers. She allowed just two baserunners through the initial three innings, which included one reaching first on a passed ball after a strikeout.
Offensively, IUP spread the wealth as four batters had multiple hits and four different players registered an RBI. IUP jumped ahead 3-0 in the first, adding three more in the fifth.
All three of IUP's first inning runs were unearned as
Paige Truax,
Delaney Patella and
Brianna Pusateri all collected run-scoring singles in the early going.
Tess Smiley was a catalyst in the fifth inning for IUP, singling home Pikula on a 2-1 pitch.
Smiley advanced to second on her RBI single, later advancing to third on a wild pitch and scoring on a Truax single for a 7-0 IUP margin.
Up Next
IUP gets a day to recover on Monday before returning to action on Tuesday, March 12 with games against Bentley (10:00 a.m.) and Lewis (2:45 p.m.).
Follow
For coverage of the IUP softball program, follow the Crimson Hawks on X (Twitter) and Instagram @IUPsoftball and online at IUPathletics.com.
